For Madden 23 players, the recent dysfunction surrounding its Franchise mode is just the latest in a long line of follies since the game launched in August. Seemingly due to faulty cloud services, Madden 23 has been plagued for months with saved data losses and other cloud-based chaos. Though several patches and hotfixes have successfully fixed some of the game's issues, this latest episode is sadly emblematic of the game's deeper issues

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when or why the game's cloud server problems started. It could be that a planned update to the game's servers occurred and broke something, or it could be that cloud services buckled under pressure as buyers and player counts ramped up in the weeks that followed launch. But in any event, it's been a mess. These issues have seemed to affect all modes, but Franchise has been impacted the most. Given that Tiburon once told me Franchise is the game's most popular mode, it's no small matter.

Until mid-October, Franchise players were frequently hit with erased saves. This manifested in a number of ways. Simple team management duties, like setting a depth chart or signing free agents, would be undone. In worse examples, entire games would be lost. It's hard to express how demoralizing it is to play in a competitive Madden league, finish a game, and watch it all disappear as soon as you get back to the menu. Even in defeat, you're losing stats that may have benefited your team with things like individual player upgrades.